


Go Back, Baby (The Way You Came)

by Liralen



Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liralen/pseuds/Liralen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People always feel like they've met Bobby before. Also known as the one with all the time-traveling. Title taken from Wild Sweet Orange's "An Atlas to Follow".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Back, Baby (The Way You Came)

People always feel like they've met Bobby before. It's something in his face, better-looking than most but somehow indistinct, rainwater-clear eyes and hair the color of the brown crayon in the Crayola 8-pack. He's tall, but not extraordinarily so, medium-pitched voice and a smile that is easy and unmemorable. He shakes their hands and smiles and assures them _no, we've never met, I get that all the time. I look like a lot of people_ he says to make them laugh, and they are charmed and disarmed, already letting the question of where they've seen him before slip away, already forgetting him.  
  
Most of the time it's true. Except, of course, for the times it isn't, which are growing like x's on a calendar, harder to hold onto every day, harder to keep separate in his mind. But there's only one other person who really knows about that, and he's most of the way across the country--at least, for the moment.  
  
*  
  
Bobby has strings of good days, whole weeks when he laughs and yells and rough-houses with Zito, flicks wads of tape at the back of Street's head and drinks orange juice straight from the carton. He's bright and good and 26 years old, eating whole lasagnas with Harden at the all-night diner and turning double plays like some unstoppable force, a fixed star in the sky. He learns to savor these moments, to stretch them out and wear them down, not counting days, avoiding clocks and mirrors, because it never lasts.  
  
In May they win five games in a row, Yankees and Giants bookending a sweep of the Mariners, and Bobby can feel it growing inside of him, pushing at the boundaries of his skin until he's shaking with the effort to hold still. He's hopeful like always that this time it will pass, but he's already making arrangements, 15 years of experience preparing him for the perpetual unknown.  
  
He's in the kitchen making breakfast when the sunlight buzzes behind his eyes and the floor lurches drunkenly to the left and swings up to meet him. The toast pops up a moment later, crisp and golden, slowly going cold as it stands in profile like an orphaned sentry on the horizon.  
  
*  
  
There's a hand on his chest and the dirty ends of Danny Haren's hair tickling his face, bright inquisitive eyes fixed only on him. The angle and dishwater translucency of the light suggests early morning, but that doesn't tell him much.  
  
"Morning, sunshine. Get in a fight with a particularly mean cactus last night?"  
  
Danny's breath reeks of Jack Daniels but his eyes are steady, sore and suffering through the aftermath. Bobby reaches for his heart to check his own pulse, runs into Danny's hand on the way and leaves it there, fingers slipping.  
  
"What day is it?" he asks, voice creaking like he's been shouting all night, but about what, at who?  
  
"Jesus, you do it big," Danny laughs, not the grated sound Bobby was fearing, low and pleasant. "It's Sunday," Haren says, and then, "the 21st. Of May. 2006," because he's done this routine with him so many times before.  
  
May 21st. Bobby closes his eyes, fingers curling around Haren's, trying to fit this piece into the calendar in his mind. He's lost Saturday, day-game against the Giants--who was pitching, what was the final, he needs to know these things. He feels the Giants probably took yesterday's game, will probably take this series, but he's not sure why, an errant piece of information in his head without a footnote.  
  
"C'mon, let's get you some breakfast," Danny says like a good older brother, only they're the same age, slipping his hands under Bobby's armpits and levering him up. He stumbles and catches himself on the counter, and he can see now what Haren meant about the cactus: there are long scratches on the back of Bobby's hands, traveling up his arms further than he can push the sleeve up, thin and ragged and ground in with dirt. He touches his cheek and feels a warm flush of pain throb through it, fingertips tacky with dried blood when he pulls them away. There's a memory of a baseball field at night, aluminum bleachers cold against his back and 16-year-olds too strong for their size. He licks the blood from his fingers, hears Haren make a disgusted noise behind him.  
  
"Fuckin' freak," Danny says, and it doesn't feel like the first time.  
  
*  
  
"What do you think's gonna happen?" Mulder asks, unclear like maybe he's gesturing to something to fill in the meaning, recaps on Sportscenter, CNN with its parade of casualties. Mulder is bad on the phone, always forgetting the miles between them, hard to read without the arch of his brows and the angle of his mouth to fill in the gaps.  
  
"I don't know," Bobby says, because it's true no matter what Mulder's talking about, baseball or the next election or the plot of the made-for-TV-movie on TNT. "How's your shoulder?"  
  
"You tell me," Mulder says, which Bobby hates, which Mulder knows that Bobby hates. "Am I ever gonna pitch in the big leagues again, skip?"  
  
"Not if I strangle you first," Bobby says, deflecting the question. "It's your fucking arm, you tell me how it feels."  
  
"It hurts." Mulder's voice falls in on itself, a collapsing old man and he sounds like he's got thirty years on Bobby instead of three. "Feels like someone hacked halfway through it with a rusty saw, which, hey, they might have done." Rustling and a muffled sound, the click-clug rhythm of his swallow, and Mulder's voice is calmer when it returns. "How about you? What's the damage?"  
  
"Broken rib." Bobby's fingers explore the rift, pushing until he can feel the sharp point of bone, punching up through his skin. "A few scrapes, nice raw streak under my eye. It's pretty hot," he tells him, dripping sarcasm. "Larry says 4-6 weeks."  
  
"Jesus Christ. Who did that to you?"  
  
It's on the tip of his tongue to say "you did," but he's gotten a lot of practice at biting his tongue. "Just some asshole with a 95 mph brushback," he says instead, which is another version of the truth. "The rest, I must've been wasted." Also not a lie.  
  
"You need a fucking mom," Mulder huffs, oddly adorable in his concern. "Gotta take better fucking care of yourself."  
  
"Trying," Bobby says. "Danny made me breakfast this morning," remembering the sizzle of eggs in the skillet, Looney Toons glasses of orange juice and the blue color Danny's hair turned in the new light.  
  
"He needs a mother, too," Mulder says, and he is equally endearing in his jealousy. The feeling curls up like a sleepy cat in Bobby's chest, warm and content. "And I need sleep. Talk to you soon?" It's a question but it isn't, or Bobby just doesn't know what's being asked. Exhaustion is catching up with him, heavy in his limbs.  
  
"Yeah," he says, "soon. Good night," awkward like a child, so many other things rushing to his tongue, but the dial tone gets there first.  
  
*  
  
He's having yet another version of the same dream that's been playing for the last 15 years. Long wide halls like a museum, hardwood on the floor, and he's inside-out of himself, both locked into and high above the scene.  
  
The parade of Bobby-duplicates lines the hall, each frozen figure glued into a scene like the lions and zebras in their displays at Golden Gate Park. They watch him with glassy gazes as he makes his way down the row, pausing sometimes to read the signs, sneaking glances back into the chapters of his past. Here's two-year-old Bobby trying his first bite of Cheerios; he's six-year-old Bobby in tee-ball, overlarge uniform and the helmet threatening to swallow his head, about to hit his first home run.  
  
The scenes are not all pleasant, or momentuous: 16-year-old Bobby stands next to a wrecked Toyota; 12-year-old Bobby is mid-jerk in the bathroom, his mother's lingerie catalogue open at his feet. 14-year-old Bobby kisses Jessica Norris at the Sadie Hawkins. 10-year-old Bobby is beating the shit out of a kid who just threw at his head, fist suspended forever at the height of its arc, always threatening to fall.  
  
As the statue Bobbys get older the scenes get harder to look at. Countless college-aged Bobbys pass out in hallways, fuck their girlfriends, cheat on tests. Draft-day Bobby is putting an A's cap on, smiling wide for the camera. There are Bobbys riding buses in Midland and hitting doubles in Sacramento, sweating beneath a full Phoenix sky; Bobbys in green and gold striking out and sliding home and kissing Mark Mulder in dark corners. There's a Bobby laid out on the floor of Danny Haren's living room, and a Bobby in the dugout with a bandage around his ribs, and then there's a Bobby all alone in his case, facing Bobby himself.  
  
The glass display cases stretch on endlessly, but they are all empty. The last Bobby in the row is barefoot and unlabeled, open hands pressed to the glass as if trying to push through. Dream-Bobby lines up his palms against the glass, leaning in, and the marble eyes fly open, and they are both screaming.  
  
*  
  
He wakes up sweating, all the sheets wrenched to one side and spilling onto the floor. His jaw aches in steady pulses, and his back teeth slide hot and smooth beneath his tongue. Eyes pulled wide and searching in the reedy darkness, caught in that moment between dreaming and waking, and he nearly pisses himself when Mulder touches his hip.  
  
"Same dream?" Mulder asks, fuzzy and weighted down with sleep, curling instinctively into the warm spot Bobby's left behind.  
  
"What day is it?" Bobby whispers, already reaching across the bed for Mulder's cell phone. 2:08 AM on November 29th. It's the offseason. Bobby sags, weak in the sudden absence of terror, burrowing back under the covers and into Mulder's arms, which part for him even in sleep.  
  
*  
  
"Get out, get out, get out...fucker," Swisher swears, watching from the dugout steps as Bradley's fly ball slices foul. The field is flung out like a picnic blanket beneath the sun, so green it hurts Bobby's eyes. It's a hot June afternoon and they're mopping up Minnesota, little green broomheads stuck to the brims of fans' hats.  
  
"Where the hell'd you get to last night?" Swisher asks, all swaggering Southern drawl, taking short cuts with a bat in the hole. "One minute you were bringing back the next round, and the next it was like you had disappeared."  
  
Bobby's heart stutter-stops, but Swisher isn't even looking at him, busy sanding down the slim neck of the bat just above the knob.  
  
"Yeah, last night," Bobby stalls, cycling dizzily through days and weeks, whole patches of his memory blacked out like a Raiders' game. "Yeah, I saw this chick, I mean, I met, at the bar... she was really hot." He feels his heart burst back to life, remembering long-fingered hands and skinny wrists, inexperienced but eager tongue. "Really hot."  
  
"Yeah?" Swisher is distracted, watching Frank Thomas battle back to a full count. "Shit, wish I'd seen her. That place was fucking dead."  
  
"Yeah," Bobby agrees, dizzy and flushed with heat, lost in the memory and unsteady on his feet. "I'm, uh, gonna...uh..." he tries, thumb jerking toward the tunnel, but no one's paying attention. He makes it to the clubhouse before throwing up, knees jarring against the sink, head flashing, everything a little too far to the right, and it can't be happening again, it's too soon, but the nausea tightens and pulls taut behind his navel, inside-out, and he hits the ground.  
  
*  
  
The first thing he thinks with any clarity is, _fucking snow_.  
  
"Hey, man, you all right?" Low-rubbed voice with the nasal Midwest accent, wide hands turning him over, and though his head is pounding Bobby's smile flares bright--only stalling when he meets the boy's eyes, shiny as new quarters and the color of Bombay gin.  
  
"Dude, you okay?" the boy asks again, brow pinched in concern, and Bobby can see now that he's younger than he thought, barely 14. "I saw that fall you took, wicked nasty. Did you crack your head?" And then, "Dude. Not exactly dressed for the weather."  
  
The boy tugs at his sleeve, and Bobby looks down to see that the muddy snow has sogged into his uniform, probably worse on his back where the weight of his body is slowly melting the layers below him. It's like he doesn't feel the chill until the boy points out how inadequately he's dressed--never mind bizarrely--and all at once he's shivering, teeth snapping out a jittery tattoo against each other, hands rapidly losing shades of flesh-color as he watches. "Fuck," Bobby chatters, wavering on the edges, "is there a, like a place, some place that's not here and not so fucking cold?"  
  
"There's the equipment shed," the boy says, eyeing him distrustfully, which, honestly, he can't blame, fully grown man laid out half-conscious in a baseball uniform in the dead of winter; there were so many kinds of wrong crammed into that Bobby was surprised the kid had hung around this long. "I know the combination, and it should be dry."  
  
"Fine, that's fine. Lead the way."  
  
"Who do you play for?" the kid asks, rolling a few bats into the corner and kicking stray pieces of equipment aside to clear a space on the cold cement floor.  
  
"The A's," Bobby answers dumbly, huddled back into the warm cave of a catcher's chestplate. "I mean, uh. Just, just a rec team, you know. Not the real A's."  
  
The boy gives him a strange leveled look. "Well, obviously," he says. "Else you wouldn't be out here sleeping in the snow, you'd have a huge mansion and like a jillion dollars." He pauses. "Cool uniform, though. Looks just like it."  
  
"Thanks." Bobby traces one finger idly over the stitching on the elephant, eyes wide in the murky darkness for spiders. "Who do you play for?"  
  
"Thornwood High," the kid rattles off with pride. Bobby glances to him, eyebrows hitched high, and the boy quirks his mouth and shrugs. "Well, in a few months. 'M a freshman, but I'm gonna make Varsity."  
  
"I know," Bobby mumbles distractedly, tired and nauseous, wanting nothing more than to drop into sleep right here in the shed, but feeling already the familiar prickling of his skin, the slip-slide of the world going out of focus. "You're gonna be the best on the team, too, with that fastball of yours."  
  
The boy goes still. "How do you know that?" His voice cracks in the middle, uncertainty and mixed-up hormones, the deep voice retreating into something small and childlike. Bobby pulls himself unsteadily to his feet and dusts his hands on his drying pants, angling a glance down at the pale oval of the boy's face.  
  
"I know a lot about you, Mark," he says with a smile for the boy's wide eyes, sweaty hands, sudden cartoon-proportioned fear. This is always his favorite part. "I'll be seeing you."  
  
He tugs the shed door open and disappears into the evening. When the boy at last summons the courage to peek out after him, the only footprints lead back in.  
  
*  
  
"It's September first, 2004," Mulder says like a voicemail greeting around a mouthful of cereal, teeth clacking off the metal spoon. "You've been gone for three days." He tips the bowl up in two hands, strong throat working as he drinks down the sugary milk, wipes the back of one wide hand across his mouth and turns to look at Bobby. "Shit."  
  
He feels a flurry of near-hysterical laughter tear through him, wondering how many times he's seen this look on Mulder's face before.  
  
"Are you--" Mulder starts, up and crossing the room to him in one motion, the orphaned spoon rocking in its empty bowl. He cuts the question off when he gets close enough to pick up the green-gold tones of week-old bruises beneath Bobby's eyes. "You're not," he finishes instead, and Bobby shakes his head.  
  
"No," he says, "I'm sorry."  
  
"How long can you stay?" Mulder's hand on his chest is tearing open something important inside, something soft and yielding that bleeds with a certain look.  
  
"Not long." Thumb in the shallow behind Mulder's ear, fingers laid out along the fine bones of his skull. Bobby can already feel the vertigo building, and he thinks he'd like to keep Mulder like this--a little wide-eyed and wild, strung together with sadness. Burned down by desperation to something Bobby rarely sees, and if there was only _more time--_  
  
He has just long enough to laugh.  
  
*  
  
In his bed. How he knows, he isn't sure--the way the sheets know his skin, the light falling only on the left side of his body--how does anyone know these things? He's learned to trust his instincts.  
  
Instincts say he is not alone. Listen, breathe, adapt--the pupils dilating like a fastball down the middle, everything he's ever learned at once present; not his father's words or the last at-bat, just the sure readiness of hands and mind, the open space of possibility. Listen, wait, think--don't move until the moment is there.  
  
He's not entirely sure he isn't dreaming. Like most times.  
  
"Good morning. You're sort of crushing my arm."  
  
A shape resolves itself into Danny Haren. He's too cheerful for the hour, which feels early, though there's no evidence either way.  
  
Bobby looks down. He is indeed laying on Haren's arm. He sits up and draws the sheet to his armpits, knees gathered to his chest, watching as Haren rolls onto his side and tucks the no-longer-crushed arm beneath his head.  
  
"Did we--ah. This is going to sound weird--"  
  
"Second time," Haren says like he's said it before. His eyes are searching for something, and Bobby never noticed how light they are. "You didn't seem _that_ drunk."  
  
"No one ever does," Bobby answers absently. He's digging teeth into the faint pain of his bottom lip, remembering other tastes--the hard snap of whiskey, the tangy illicit curve of Haren's throat. He rubs his wrist and finds the small bluing bruise there, watches Danny's smile stretch cat-like and well-fed across his face.  
  
"It's July," Bobby says. "T--uesday," he tries with less confidence, chest easing when Danny nods.  
  
"Good to see you can remember a few things." Danny's hand is unexpectedly casual on his knee. "If you need to fill in the rest, I can help."  
  
The invitation hangs like a strange sad breed of hope between them.  
  
*

  
The team keeps winning, and nothing much else matters for awhile. Bobby's broken ribs knit together like tectonic plates, an uneasy truce. They watch him carefully as he throws to first from his knees, fields grounders forehand, backhand, spare steps to second base. They're waiting for him to break.  
  
He's waiting for the same thing.  
  
*  
  
"Going, going...rooobbed!" A miniature Mark Kotsay steals a homerun in slow motion on the flatscreen above the bar while the real one high-fives Zito and bellows out an order for another round. One of the bartenders switches the channel from Sportscentre to the Giants game and they boo him down, throwing crushed cocktail napkins.  
  
"Egotists," the bartender charges, laying out a fresh row of drinks.  
  
Haren pushes a glass of something clear and fizzing into his hand that burns tart when it passes his lips. The pitcher slides onto the stool next to him and Bobby leans into his steady warmth, three drinks deep and a good clean exhaustion trembling in his chest. He's glued together again with pine tar and eye black and the wheel of chewing tobacco in Scutaro's back pocket, a rare reward for going two-for-three and clearing the fences. Everyone's happy and relaxed, throwing so much money down that the hotel bartender mostly ignores their gloating, peeling wet tens away from napkins and grumbling under his breath.  
  
"Look at the kid," Danny says, a little incredulous, nodding with his chin across the room to where Street is babbling earnestly at Zito, his face flushed with beer and sun and 20 saves. "You believe him? You even believe he's real?"  
  
"Don't think he is. I mean, has anyone checked? Looked for tags, robotic implants, signs of alien invasion?" He arches his brows comically high and Danny laughs, always a surprising sound to Bobby for some reason, never low enough.  
  
"You were good today," Danny says, eyes dark and angled down in a smile that is all kinds of bad news.  
  
"I know," Bobby replies, matching his grin, melted down enough that he doesn't flinch when Haren's hand finds his thigh under the table. It feels a little wrong, but then, it always feels a little wrong, and Bobby is drunk enough on whiskey and good will to let the feeling slide away, let himself return the gentle pressure to the inside of Haren's knee.  
  
He doesn't remember if he broke up with Mulder this time or if it was the other way around. Doesn't suppose it matters, since Mulder will call him in six days and forgive him for whatever it was they fought about last. Mulder is always calling and forgiving him, never apologizing, never asking "Can we...?" but instead assuring "Next time."  
  
Bobby waits out his sentence under scratchy hotel blankets, ticking off the hours with swipes of his tongue as Haren shudders and moans his name.  
  
*  
  
Mulder and Haren find out about Bobby at the same time. Sort of.  
  
He's bent backwards over the kitchen counter, laid open by Haren's kiss, and then he's on his ass in an empty ballpark in Chicago, and Mulder is looking at him the way he did that first night in the snow--steel-eyed and scared, with a little more rage, caught on the edge of something he doesn't want to face and going down.  
  
Mulder gapes at him, fishlike, 16 years young and still scratched raw by the wounds the world inflicts. Since he met him (the first time, Spring Training beneath an achingly bright Arizona sun), Bobby has wondered what made Mulder so cold, so sarcastic and slick, what precise moment broke him down and built him back into something that couldn't break again. He wonders if he is about to find out.  
  
"Your face--" Mulder says finally, half-reaching for him before he even thinks about it, jerking his hand back before they touch. Bobby watches the hand turn into a fist, feels Mulder's eyes sweep across his skin instead.  
  
"I punched you. I gave you a black eye." Mulder sounds, surprisingly not hysterical, but rather like a man(boy) who is trying hard not to be hysterical.  
  
Bobby's mouth is dry. The hard edge of the bleacher is digging into his back.  
  
"That was months ago."  
  
"That was _two minutes_ ago!"  
  
Bobby tries to touch him, sighs and holds still when Mulder shrinks away. His mouth still feels swollen and raw from Haren's teeth, and this is the first time he's talked to Mulder in two weeks.  
  
"Two minutes ago for you. Three weeks for me." Bobby pauses, thoughts tracing the glowing timeline that lives in the back of his mind. "Or twelve years, depending on how you look at it."  
  
Mulder only stares. Bobby wants to laugh, buy he can't. Every day since that day he first met Mulder has become a stone to be swallowed.  
  
"I hit you," Mulder says. "I hit you because you said--" He stops, looking away from that, a fine trembling in his jaw, and he is already six feet tall but he is still so pale and young. "I hit you, and then I walked away, but I didn't mean it. And when I came back you were gone, and then..."  
  
He looks up at Bobby, big icy blue eyes and that fine mouth coiled around the question, and Bobby knows for certain now that this is the moment he's been waiting for. All those years, all that wondering--no big mystery, after all. The great tragedy that happened to Mark Mulder was him.  
  
"You were gone," Mulder says, "and then you weren't."  
  
"Yes," Bobby says.  
  
There's a moment of silence, then Mulder says flatly, "I don't understand."  
  
"Yeah," Bobby says again, because he doesn't know what to say next. He wonders suddenly why he's never asked Mulder how exactly he explained this to him. He knows that he does, somehow, of course, and he's fairly sure they both make it out of here okay. At least, he likes to think Mulder would have told him if he'd kicked Bobby's ass that night--this night--or anything traumatic like that.  
  
"Okay," Bobby breathes. "You're um. 16, right?" Wincing with that strange pseudo-pedaphilic guilt when Mulder nods.  
  
"And I'm 26." Mulder shrugs, nods again.  
  
Bobby open his mouth to say more, then in a lightbulb moment reaches for his wallet instead, digging out his driver's license and tossing it to Mulder.  
  
"There," he says confidently, "look at that."  
  
It's a long, dramatic moment as Mulder examines the California I.D., and Bobby keeps bracing himself, waiting for the hysteria to begin again. But after a thoughtful moment Mulder looks up at him again, and he's plainly nothing but confused.  
  
"Why the fuck would you get a fake I.D. to make yourself 13?"  
  
Bobby almost pulls something trying to keep a straight face. "Look at the date it was issued," he tells Mulder.  
  
Mulder takes another look, but when he glances up again he's wearing the same expression.  
  
"I still don't get it."  
  
Bobby sighs.  
  
"It isn't fake," he says. "I was born in 1980. Three years after you. I'm 26." He pauses. "And I'm 13, too, somewhere in Long Beach in 1993."  
  
"It  is 1993," Mulder tells him.  
  
"Yeah, it is. But it wasn't a few minutes ago--not for me. I'm not--I'm not doing a very good job explaining."  
  
"No," Mulder agrees, oddly calm. Probably he has decided that Bobby is a nutcase who's going to kill him. Bobby used to think he was a nutcase, too.  
  
"Okay, wait, let me try this again," Bobby says. "It--I don't know why, but it started happening when I was 11. I can only go back, not forward, so the longer--the longer I go on, the more... _back_ , I guess, there is to go through. The first time you met me, okay, I was 26 and you were 14. But the first time _I_ met _you_ , I was 22, and you were 25. That happened four years ago for me, but it won't happen for another nine years for you. You see?"  
  
He stares up earnestly. Mulder's giving him this look like he's lost his fucking mind.  
  
"You've lost your fucking mind."  
  
Bobby laughs, then, borderline maniacal, Mulder's eyes widening kid-like and stricken in the growing dark. He knows it's probably the worst possible thing he could do right now, the one thing that makes him look even crazier, but he can't control it.  
  
"Yeah," Bobby says, shaking a little, laughter and cold, hysteria and adrenaline flooding through his veins. "Yeah, I think maybe I have, a little. But it's still true. Well, you know... as true as anything."  
  
Eventually, like Bobby knew he would, Mulder asks him to prove it. "Take me with you," he says, and despite the weird cold night and the bloody scrapes over his knuckles he smiles. "Take me to the future."  
  
"I can't," Bobby says, though in reality he's not quite sure, never had guts enough to try. Mulder darts his eyes away and Bobby sighs, shoving his frozen hands in his pockets, and then he shudders to a sudden stop, something occurring to him as his fingers close around a stub of paper.  
  
"I can't take you," he says, "but maybe I can prove it. Do you have a pen or something?"  
  
Mulder digs a gnawed-at blue Bic out of his backpack as Bobby smoothes a wrinkle from the ticket. He writes across its face, quick and neat as he can manage with his fingers rapidly losing sensation, then folds it into fourths, standing to give Mulder the pen and quickly capturing one of his big hands, holding it prisoner.  
  
"Hey--" Mark begins, panic rising, but Bobby talks right over him, knowing he doesn't have much time.  
  
"This is important," he says, staring into Mulder's face. "You have to hold onto this, and you have to wait until after the draft to read it. After _your_ draft. Do you understand? It's really, really important. I don't know what might happen, otherwise."  
  
Bobby blinks, suddenly knocked apart by the weight of it all, his hand tightening on Mulder's, fisted around the ticket. "Promise me," he says.  
  
And Mulder, Mulder is terrified and half certain he's insane, but he's sold right then by the look on Bobby's face, though neither of them knows it yet. He already believes somewhere deep and important inside of him; knows it like he knows sometimes what pitch is coming, though there's nothing to give it away. He knows this moment and this man and this stupid ticket stub are going to change everything, and he'd throw it right back in Bobby's face if he could; but he knows too that it's already too late, the stars aligned long before this, and so he nods and stuffs his closed hands into his pockets, and he says, "I promise."  
  
"I've got to go now," Bobby tells him, feeling the slow lurch in his stomach, that awful certainty. "I don't know when I'll be back, but I think maybe it's going to be awhile, so. Uh. Take care, okay?"  
  
"Okay," Mulder whispers. He stares as Bobby shakes and starts to sweat, the whites of his eyes showing in between gasping breaths. He's not sure why, but it feels like something he shouldn't see, something private he's intruding on. He closes his eyes, standing there so close he can feel the heat rise from Bobby's face, and when he opens them again a moment later, he's alone.  
  
*  
  
In 1998, in South Holland, Illinois, Mark Mulder says goodbye to Billy Beane and hangs up the phone. He moves through the rooms and halls of his house, smiling vaguely at congratulations, ducking under searching hands, and slips up the stairs to his bedroom.  
  
He takes a box of baseball cards and autographed balls down from his closet, and after sifting carefully through the stack of old tickets he finds the one he's looking for, pressed into quarters, just as he left it five years ago. He unfolds it, a shock of yellow and white, and he reads the bold blue letters handwritten across its face:  
  
 **IN THE FIRST ROUND, WITH THE SECOND OVERALL PICK, THE OAKLAND ATHLETICS SELECT MICHIGAN STATE'S MARK MULDER.**  
  
And then, slightly messier just below that, scribbled as if in afterthought:  
  
 **see you in spring training.**  
  
Mulder reads the message twice more, running his thumb over the words. He turns the ticket sideways to read the game information: Baltimore Orioles vs. Oakland Athletics. July 18 2006.  
  
He starts to grin.

*

Bobby falls asleep in Seattle, wakes up hours later in Mulder's bed and can't decide if the fuzz lining his brain is from the passage of time or space.

"How long have I been gone?" he asks when Mulder finishes his automatic recitation of date and place. He's still half asleep, words blurring against Mulder's throat, the warm curve of his jaw.

"Hmm," Mulder hums. "I dunno, four, five hours? I fell asleep."

"Me, too," Bobby says, casting the net of his memory backwards, trying to calculate how many jumps he made. Three, he's pretty sure. He can feel it, deep under his skin, the heavy drag of all that motion. It doesn't happen very often in such a short span.

"Tell me where you went," Mulder says. His big, callused left hand sweeps back the bristled wheat of Bobby's hair, always so surprisingly tender when he's well-fucked and fogged by early morning.

"Seattle," Bobby tells him. "And… South Holland. I kissed you." The memories float to the surface with the words, always easier to recall once he's started. "I kissed you for the first time. Or I dreamed I did."

Bobby feels Mulder shift beside him, the sharpening swing of his focus. His voice is still soft, but less clouded with sleep when he asks, "Was I wearing that Purdue sweatshirt?"

"Yeah, a 'No Fear' hat," Bobby breathes out, relieved. Under the covers, he pinches the thin skin at Mulder's hip gently. "You were such a little bro."

"Mmhm," Mulder affirms. "That was it. First kiss."

"Obviously I taught you a few things later on," Bobby says, and Mulder takes a minute to process that, and then groans.

"I was _15,_ you big fucking perv," he complains, flailing his arm out in a sleepy attack. Bobby catches it and uses it to drag Mulder around him, shifting his heavy-warm body until he's on his side and Bobby can curl in closer, chest to chest.

"I'm just saying, man, there's an art, and shoving your tongue in a guy's mouth until he's choking on it is— _ow_!"

"Little bitch," Mulder grumbles, rubbing chapped lips and a hint of stubble over the skin he just bit.

"Slobber _everywhere,_ " Bobby harangues him, yelping and laughing when Mulder rolls him underneath, crushes him beneath his bulk.

"I'll show you slobber," he threatens, licking a wet-hot path up Bobby's neck that sets off pleasant shivers. He's smiling, eyes still half-closed in the growing flood of light, leaning in to catch Bobby's mouth, but he stops and blinks more fully awake when Bobby holds him back. "What?"

"What if this is a dream?" Bobby asks.

Mulder's face changes, and Bobby hates that he can't name the expression. "This isn't a dream."

"How do you know? That's exactly what dream-Mulder would say."

Mulder smiles then, his mouth a tender curl, a tiny chink in his armor, like the best carnival prize Bobby ever won.

"Trust me," he says, and when he moves to press their lips together, Bobby doesn't stop him.

The kiss is long, and slow, and sweet, and when it ends, they're both still there.


End file.
